


Hamilton Drabbles

by Spreest, theboybismark



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Hospitals, Illnesses, M/M, Needles, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 07:43:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spreest/pseuds/Spreest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/theboybismark/pseuds/theboybismark
Summary: Hamilton Drabbles that Spreest and Azuna83 cowrite together! We're always looking for more prompts, so please leave a comment if you have a particular pairing or scenario, or prompt, or anything of the sort.





	

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Madison manages to attract Jefferson, even while being both stubborn in having his vitals checked and very ill. He just wants personal space and to be fought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's loosely based on this image https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/81/ac/cc/81accc707f9b36781ab880a113edcbff.jpg from ohsebs at tumblr! It was a silly prompt, and we had fun writing it. We basically wrote it in one night.

It just had to be pneumonia, didn’t it? Smack dab in the middle of the school-year too, near the end of winter’s break. James Madison looked wistfully out of the small window that hung just above eye-level about two feet from his assigned bed, the curtains drawn around most of his cot to give him at least some sense of privacy in the disturbingly public room.

Nurses came in whenever they pleased, tossing his curtains aside without so much as a glance to check on his vitals, the soft footfalls of the nurse’s attire giving him no sign to when such intrusion would take place. He’d decided to bury himself in an assortment of pillows left by a previous nurse, blocking out the tacky lighting of the room and leaving him to his thoughts, shrouded in at least somewhat-soft, pillowy comfort. Of course, now would be a perfect time for a nurse to come and check on his vitals, when he’d  _ just  _ gotten comfortable.

When Thomas Jefferson pulled the curtain aside, he thought he would be greeted by some old person, trying to make nice conversation. It was basically always the same with these people. And kids. Kids would always ask to touch his hair. When he saw the patient in the bed, he was surprised. He was about his age and… even though he was obviously ill, he still looked kind of good. 

“I’m here to check your vitals.” Well if that wasn’t obvious enough, with all the medical equipment he would need in his hands. He knew that he was supposed to be making conversation with his patients.

“So, when did you arrive? I don’t think we’ve met yet.” He pulled out a small watch from his pocket while casually taking the guy’s arm, searching for the pulse. He started counting in his head. It distracted him. Damn, he needed a distraction, because he was attracted to this guy and he wasn’t supposed to be. Thomas messed his first attempt up. The second one didn’t go any better and the guy in the bed probably thought he was the most incompetent nurse around. Shit. “Sorry ‘bout that. Can I try again?” Why was he so nervous? It wasn’t like he hadn’t taken attractive people’s vitals before - actually it was a great excuse to get close to them.

Madison blanked. This guy was new. Almost half the staff knew Madison, due to his frequent visits. He was kind of attractive, with long, curly hair, and pink scrubs. He didn't look very old, so he must have been an intern or volunteer. It doesn’t take  _ three _ damn tries to read someone’s pulse. He’s sure he could do it himself. 

“You don’t need my permission.” His voice came out blunt. He didn’t really want to move from his oh-so-comfortable position under his mass of pillows, and this guy was keeping him from returning to that position. Even if he didn’t have somewhere extremely important to be, i.e under the pillows, Madison wasn’t one to touch someone for too long.

Still, the nurse’s hand was warm, a stark contrast from his clammy, ill skin. He watched carefully as the other man formed the beginning of numbers on his mouth, watching as he furrowed his eyebrows up and pressed his lips into a line, as if biting back words he wasn’t supposed to say in front of patients. Instantly, the shorter man withdrew his arm, retreating to tuck himself away under the cushions again.  


Jefferson raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing? I’m not even hurting you… I think.” He still had a shit ton to do, take the blood pressure, the blood sugar level, and the function of his lungs.

“I need to finish this up or the head nurse will be mad.” And he didn’t want that. To put it bluntly, she was a bitch.

“I can take your blood pressure first. It will only take about five minutes to do all this sh… stuff, so could you please be compliant?” Sometimes it was hard to be nice in this job. Thomas had already worked for about four hours and was tired. He had been working the night shift prior and was still worn out from _that_.

“Or, do you want me to send a nurse, or a nursing student, or something?” He was slowly getting more and more confident. That guy didn’t seem like he had interest at all and for some reason, that made it easier. Though Thomas didn’t know why, because damn, he was _flawless_ and he knew it. Probably a straight guy, that… what was his name? He checked his papers. Madison. James Madison.

James Madison, who currently, was disinterested in whatever the nurse had to say to him. His vitals were  _ fine,  _ and he knew that, so why did he have to prove that to anyone else? He  _ knew _ when he was dying, or when his lungs were malfunctioning, or any of that baggage that came along with pneumonia and being sick near-constantly. As someone who felt sick most of the time, he learned to live with it, and if he couldn’t, well, he’d die with it, obviously. He was stubborn in that way, especially when the situation took too much time. His reply consisted of two words. 

“Fight me." The phrase was followed by a short spasm of coughs. Existing under the pillows led to a lack of air going directly into his lungs, but he was somewhat fine with that.  

Thomas let out the most exhausted sigh. “I’m not gonna fight you, I’m just trying to get your vitals. And maybe it would be better if you came out from under the pillows. You’re already lacking oxygen."

He was pointing at the small screen of a little device which was clipped to Madison’s finger. “See? 89% oxygen saturation. That’s not normal. And before you went under the pillows it was at 91%.” Good thing his patient couldn’t take the whole pulse oximeter under the blanket.

“If you die here, we’re probably gonna get sued. And I don’t want to go to court.” He was already preparing the needle to take a drop of blood for testing the blood sugar level. Thomas was sneakily trying to grab Madison’s hand from underneath the blanket. He knew he wasn’t supposed to do stuff like that and wait until a patient complied, but damn. This was draining.

Instantly, James curled his hand away, as if by reflex. His initial thought was that his hands were clammy, that weird sort of hot-cold that would not be a delight to hold, and probably covered with germs, which would be passed from his hands to the nurse’s to his clothes and  _ who knows _ where else from there, but then he relaxed his hand and heaved an entirely too dramatic sigh. Might as well just get this over with. 

Anyways, the nurse  _ did  _ have nice hands, even if this was purely in a professional environment. And he spoke beyond the common courtesies of, “How are you doing in school,” and “How old are you,” and things like that. In fact, he’d only asked  _ one _ painstakingly awkward question this entire time, which had to be some sort of nurse-record. He extended his arm a little bit to make it easier for the other, but didn’t budge from within the confines of his blanket fortress. “No. I’m ill, let me have this one luxury, or fight me.” James was a little tired.

“I guess I can do most of this stuff while you’re under there. But I need to see your hand, because I’m gonna poke a needle in the tip of your finger and I can’t do that blindly. That would hardly be any fun.” Thomas gently pulled Madison’s hand out from under the pillows.

“It’s gonna hurt right about… now.” And there went the needle, right into the tip of his patient’s index finger. “That was the worst part.” He took the blood sugar level, it was normal as he thought it would be. Then he grabbed his watch again. Time for his third attempt to get the pulse. This time, he kept track, and Thomas wrote down the results. 

“But you know, you gotta move your arm out of there if I’m supposed to take your blood pressure. And _hell_ , I’m not gonna fight you, you’re ill.” Even though he had been a bit annoyed a few moments ago, Jefferson couldn’t help but grin right now. This guy sure was amusing.

Instead of complying with the very simple given task, James’ arm further retreated into the conglomerate of pillows for the briefest of moments. He examined his finger for a moment. After the first few pricks for his vitals, he stopped over-dramatizing how much it actually hurt and simply deadpanned through the mostly painless process.

He weighed his options. He could, of course, stick his arm out, let the nurse take his blood pressure, and let him leave, thus leaving Madison alone with his thoughts. Or, he could keep himself held up in the pillows forever, and continue this sort of one-sided banter with the man. That could backfire; he could call in the head nurse, or some other figure that would, at the heart of it, chastise him for acting so difficult to the staff.

He stuck his arm back out again, adjusting himself and the pillows to expose his forearm to the open air. “What’s your name?” The question came out before he could really help himself. He wasn’t interested in the nurse, not in a platonic way, not in a romantic way, he didn’t think, friends and boyfriends were weird and he was "emotionally unavailable" at the moment, but he wanted to know. Now who’s asking the semi-awkward questions that wouldn’t matter a week from now? 

Saying that Thomas was surprised about the question was surely an understatement. “Thomas. Thomas Jefferson. I already know your name and all that stuff from here.” He waved his papers in the most awkward manner before putting them away to slide the sleeve for taking blood pressure onto Madison’s arm. This electrical device was easy enough, he just had to press a button and he'd have the results only half a minute later. While that happened, he briefly looked at his watch while trying to make out the movements of his patient’s chest, which was almost impossible.

“Okay. Look. You have pneumonia and I’m supposed to check if your lungs collapse or whatnot. Can you unpillow yourself down at least to your stomach? Thank you.” He didn’t even wait for the answer and damn, if Madison wouldn’t comply, he’d just pull off the pillows himself.

Okay, the requests of these doctors were getting fucking  _ ridiculous.  _ Madison went to school. He had a part-time job. He paid his taxes. Why did he need to pull down the cover he’d  _ rightfully _ paid for with this ridiculously expensive hospital bill and toss aside the pillows he’d  _ rightfully _ and  _ respectfully _ asked a nurse for? God, you’d think this wasn’t **_America_**.

“I reiterate, Mister Jefferson, fight me.” In reality, he wasn’t even remotely annoyed. He was just too lazy and felt too ill to lift up his body into a sitting position.That one arm still hung out of the fort he’d made for himself out of pillows, but he closed his eyes and just hoped Thomas would scribble something down and leave.

“Fiiiiine.” He actually did. He scribbled something about the patient being not compliant. “I’ll be back in an hour, ring the bell if you need anything. You’ll have to bear with me for another four hours.”

Thomas grabbed all the stuff he had used to take the vitals and made his way to the next patient, not without turning around and grinning at Madison though. Damn, that guy probably looked really fine when he was not half-dead from pneumonia. “And don’t call me Mr. Jefferson, by the way. I’m probably younger than you, I don’t even know. Just call me Thomas.”

Dammit, that didn’t go as expected. James’ impromptu plan for invoking some sort of long-lasting banter failed. Oh, well, he could always try again in an hour. Pulling his arm back under the cover, he closed his eyes and tries to erase the original, bored look of the nurse’s-- Thomas Jefferson, right-- face from his mind.

This wasn’t a sitcom, dammit, nurses weren’t supposed to be slightly quirky and interesting and young and nurses definitely were not supposed to catch your eye while you’re dying of pneumonia. Well, not dying, but whatever. The point was, Thomas was some ethereal nurse from heaven that all but cured the bout of boredom that had hit James in the last few hours. Who knows? Maybe that would cure the pneumonia, too.

 

What was he even doing? Thomas had no idea, even as he left the small gift shop on the first floor. He had gotten a latte macchiato for Madison and to finish it off, he took a pen out of his pocket and wrote down his cell phone number on the cup, putting a “Fight me.” under it. Oh, and not to forget, some dorky smiley.

His heart was pounding out of his chest as he made his way back to the ward. His break was almost over and this was what he spent it with-- bringing cute patients coffee. Once again he pulled the curtain aside, seeing James in his comfortable looking pillow fort.

“This time, it’s not a check up,” Jefferson said, giving a small grin and putting the cup on the nightstand. He stood there for a second, winking at Madison, before turning around and leaving him alone again. Hopefully he liked his coffee with milk. 

Madison didn’t bother unfurling to see while the nurse had strode into his “private abode--” as someone who was sick often, he _really_ took hospital space personally-- but when he did, some ten minutes later, his mouth opened slightly into an ‘o’ shape.

He’d never managed to attract anyone normally, so he’d never expected his half-dead state to get any attention from even a dead, frying worm on the side of the sidewalk, much less the charming, excessive, almost aggravating level of beauty of Jefferson. He made a mental note to get sick more often.


End file.
